My Thoughts on the Logitech Harmony 1000 Remote Control

My Thoughts on the Logitech Harmony 1000 Remote Control

I’m a long-time Philips Pronto user and I’ve been somewhat frustrated by the unresponsiveness of the Pronto development team. I noticed that Logitech just released the Harmony 1000 remote. Since they are are much easier to program than the Philips Pronto remotes, I decided I may want to purchase one, and I started researching. Unfortunately, the Harmony 1000 remote has two substantial shortcomings that are causing me not to buy it:

1) You can’t configure “soft” buttons to be on a specific screen. So you may have to scroll between screens much more frequently because the two buttons you use the most are not displayed at the same time.

2) There are no hard buttons (below the screen) for fast-forward, rewind, pause, play. If you have a TiVo or other DVR, you’ll be stuck activating the screen, looking for the soft button, and pressing the correct one each time you get to a commercial. This really sucks – it much easier to press a hard button without having to look at the screen. They should have included 4 hard buttons below the screen (with on-screen labels along the bottom edge) that can be programed to perform any function. Without these 4 buttons, the remote is a pain for DVR users.

The Philips Pronto has a lot of limitations and shortcomings, but at least those remotes have these basic issues addressed. I’m sticking with my Pronto. For now.

Gordon: Your post is probably the funniest thing I’ve read in weeks. If my posts had your wit, my traffic would increase 1000%. The Pronto takes time to program, and the software could be easier to use, but you can make it do just about anything you can imagine. I’m pretty particular, so that’s why I have a Pronto.

Just a quick note that I’m able to control my DVR’s (Motorola QIP6416) fast fowrard, rewind, play, pause, etc from the hard buttons. I just tried the directional pad and it worked for me. Until I read your post, I didn’t realize it was an issue for some.

S: You can reprogram the hard buttons on the right side of the remote to be fast-forward, rewind, etc., but they lose their intended functionality of volume/channel up down and directional pad navigation. If you reprogram the existing hard buttons, it is not intuitive what their new functions might be, as the shape and labels denote navigation and channel/volume changing.

What Logitech should have included is 4 or 5 hard buttons directly below the screen, with the bottom edge of the screen devoted to labels for these buttons. That way, these hard buttons could be programmed to perform any function and the labels on the screen (above the buttons) could be edited to describe those functions. This is what the Philips Pronto does and I can’t believe Logitech didn’t utilize this design.

Interesting- I was using the smaller volume and channel buttons (if memory serves me, they are above the directional) instead of the directional for (obviously) volume and channel. I’m also still able to use the directoinal for navigation in menus, so no loss of functionaly on this end.